Prince Lichnowsky's Memorandum on the policy of Germany while he
was Ambassador in London gains weight as well as piquancy from the fact that it was a document strictly private, for the perusal of a few intimate friends only, until a copy came somehow into the possession of Politiken, the journal of the Swedish Socialist ex- tremists. When Prince Lichnowsky came to London in 1912, the Memorandum states, Sir Edward Grey, in spite of Germany's futile but confidence-shaking policy in Morocco and the Near East, had not given up the idea of reaching an agreement with Germany. He aimed at bringing Germany into the Concert established by the Franco-British and Russo-British understandings. Prince Lich- nowsky gives to the British " pessimists " who feared that war with Germany was inevitable—a fear " based upon Germany's naval policy and conduct in 1905, 190 8, and 1911 "—credit for maintaining a friendly attitude. While our statesmen, by their failure to face plain facts and prepare against a manifest danger, invited the disaster of a European war, Germany maintained a strict Triple Alliance policy which was useless to her.
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